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Jan. 4th, 2021 09:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jakebe
I think 10 days - 2 weeks is the ideal length of vacation. You have so much time to sleep in and get some rest, but also more than enough time to do something you've been meaning to do for a minute. Better still, you actually start to miss work towards the end of the hiatus!
Today was the first day back at the day job, and I was greeted with two emergencies. First, Slack was offline so no one could really talk to each other. Second, someone missed settling the contract for our biggest enterprise customer and ended up unenrolling 1200 employees from their online courses. This customer is generally pretty chill, but the employees can get QUITE heated when anything goes wrong. It looks like we've dodged the bullet mostly for now, but I get the feeling this will continue to be a thing for the rest of the week.
After taking meditation courses through Headspace for several months now, I've gone back to 30-minute semi-guided sessions. One of the things I'm learning is that I need quiet in order to relax; in general, I prefer quiet because it allows me to work through my shit and get things done. Distractions tend to lead me away from stuff I know I should be doing, even if they're pretty dope in the short term. And now that I've gotten...better?...at meditating, it's easier to catch myself in a procrastination mindset these days and check in with myself to make a deliberate choice. If I choose distraction, there's a lot less guilt involved because I've weighed my options and actively chose what I think is the best one.
For distraction I've mostly been playing Spiritfarer. It's this great game where you're the new...spiritfarer. Your job is to sail around in this neat little afterlife and work with spirits to sort through their lives so they're ready to move on. While the spirit travels with you on your boat, you make rooms for them, upgrade those rooms, and learn how to gather resources, refine them, and use them for various upgrades. All the while, you're learning about these personalities and the things they can't let go of. It's surprisingly engrossing.
The bulk of the game comes across like an Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley clone, and part of the fun is learning how to optimize your flow. You figure out how to make more and more efficient use of your time, and how best to travel from place to place in order to take care of various tasks. At any given time, you might be cooking, looming, smelting, smithing, gardening, salvaging, mining, etc. to improve your boat, or your guests' homes, or making something new. When the spirit is ready to move on, it's always touching. Some are wistful; others are content; others still are confused or in pain. You spend some time with these people, and then they move on. But you have the things they've taught you how to do (and their homes on your boat) to remember them by. I love that there's this mechanic built into the game that keeps the spirits you've parted with in your memory.
I also have to finish Kentucky Route Zero, which is...certainly a different game, but nonetheless intriguing. It's very Lynchian, all magical realism underneath a very thin veneer of reality. After these two, I think I'll jump into Blacksad, since I got that game for Christmas. :D
Like most folks I'm not really doing New Year's Resolutions for 2021. I am renewing my commitment to a few things, though; I'm dedicated to regular updates for the Jackalope Serial Company Patreon, actually getting into reading again; adopting the "five-hour rule" where I dedicate at least five hours a week to learning something new; and exercise. I've gained weight over the past year and I'd like to get a handle on that if I can.
For online study, I have basically free courses from my day job AND a whole bunch of courses from competitors like Udemy and Skillshare. I could also pick up Duolingo again for at least a bit of the day in order to learn French (or Spanish, or Russian). There's also the Rosetta Stone, which actually DOES teach French. I could also learn how to play the clarinet, or pick up a customer service certification. There really is no end to what I *could* do, so it's just a matter of choosing what I will do. For now, I'd like to finish the free online course from my workplace and *maybe* take another one. They're actually offering money for completing them within a calendar year, so it's money I'm leaving on the table if I don't.
Writing is slow, but I'm getting into it again. This is a realization I've long known but been unable to articulate, but one of the reasons I've had so much trouble is that my protagonists are all too frequently static or reactive; it's tough to detail their inner lives in an interesting manner because thought rarely translates into action. So I'm going to work on establishing a clear motivation for my protagonists and reveal their character by detailing how they work to achieve these goals. One thing that I need to figure out is how to signal a story will be erotic/sexual upfront without being too blatant or distasteful about it. Opening scenes do a LOT of work, and I'm trying to be mindful of prioritizing my tasks. The action should flow naturally *first*, and I need to take advantage of whatever my characters are doing in order to shore up themes or ideas. Most importantly, I just need to get shit done!
Today was the first day back at the day job, and I was greeted with two emergencies. First, Slack was offline so no one could really talk to each other. Second, someone missed settling the contract for our biggest enterprise customer and ended up unenrolling 1200 employees from their online courses. This customer is generally pretty chill, but the employees can get QUITE heated when anything goes wrong. It looks like we've dodged the bullet mostly for now, but I get the feeling this will continue to be a thing for the rest of the week.
After taking meditation courses through Headspace for several months now, I've gone back to 30-minute semi-guided sessions. One of the things I'm learning is that I need quiet in order to relax; in general, I prefer quiet because it allows me to work through my shit and get things done. Distractions tend to lead me away from stuff I know I should be doing, even if they're pretty dope in the short term. And now that I've gotten...better?...at meditating, it's easier to catch myself in a procrastination mindset these days and check in with myself to make a deliberate choice. If I choose distraction, there's a lot less guilt involved because I've weighed my options and actively chose what I think is the best one.
For distraction I've mostly been playing Spiritfarer. It's this great game where you're the new...spiritfarer. Your job is to sail around in this neat little afterlife and work with spirits to sort through their lives so they're ready to move on. While the spirit travels with you on your boat, you make rooms for them, upgrade those rooms, and learn how to gather resources, refine them, and use them for various upgrades. All the while, you're learning about these personalities and the things they can't let go of. It's surprisingly engrossing.
The bulk of the game comes across like an Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley clone, and part of the fun is learning how to optimize your flow. You figure out how to make more and more efficient use of your time, and how best to travel from place to place in order to take care of various tasks. At any given time, you might be cooking, looming, smelting, smithing, gardening, salvaging, mining, etc. to improve your boat, or your guests' homes, or making something new. When the spirit is ready to move on, it's always touching. Some are wistful; others are content; others still are confused or in pain. You spend some time with these people, and then they move on. But you have the things they've taught you how to do (and their homes on your boat) to remember them by. I love that there's this mechanic built into the game that keeps the spirits you've parted with in your memory.
I also have to finish Kentucky Route Zero, which is...certainly a different game, but nonetheless intriguing. It's very Lynchian, all magical realism underneath a very thin veneer of reality. After these two, I think I'll jump into Blacksad, since I got that game for Christmas. :D
Like most folks I'm not really doing New Year's Resolutions for 2021. I am renewing my commitment to a few things, though; I'm dedicated to regular updates for the Jackalope Serial Company Patreon, actually getting into reading again; adopting the "five-hour rule" where I dedicate at least five hours a week to learning something new; and exercise. I've gained weight over the past year and I'd like to get a handle on that if I can.
For online study, I have basically free courses from my day job AND a whole bunch of courses from competitors like Udemy and Skillshare. I could also pick up Duolingo again for at least a bit of the day in order to learn French (or Spanish, or Russian). There's also the Rosetta Stone, which actually DOES teach French. I could also learn how to play the clarinet, or pick up a customer service certification. There really is no end to what I *could* do, so it's just a matter of choosing what I will do. For now, I'd like to finish the free online course from my workplace and *maybe* take another one. They're actually offering money for completing them within a calendar year, so it's money I'm leaving on the table if I don't.
Writing is slow, but I'm getting into it again. This is a realization I've long known but been unable to articulate, but one of the reasons I've had so much trouble is that my protagonists are all too frequently static or reactive; it's tough to detail their inner lives in an interesting manner because thought rarely translates into action. So I'm going to work on establishing a clear motivation for my protagonists and reveal their character by detailing how they work to achieve these goals. One thing that I need to figure out is how to signal a story will be erotic/sexual upfront without being too blatant or distasteful about it. Opening scenes do a LOT of work, and I'm trying to be mindful of prioritizing my tasks. The action should flow naturally *first*, and I need to take advantage of whatever my characters are doing in order to shore up themes or ideas. Most importantly, I just need to get shit done!
